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CHAPTER XVI.
A COUNCIL OF WAR.

N the morning after the return of the Earl of
Salisbury to Damietta, and the violent pro-
ceedings of the French Crusaders against the English
companions of their expedition, King Louis sum-
moned a council of war to deliberate on the measures
most likely to lead to the conquest of Egypt—the
grand object of the saintly monarch’s ambition.

By this time arrivals from various quarters had
swelled the army that, under the banner of St. Denis,
lay encamped at Damietta. Thither, under the
grand masters of their orders, had come the Tem-
plars and the Hospitallers, whose discipline and
knowledge of the East reudered them such potent
allies. Thither had come the Duke of Burgundy, who
had passed the winter in the Morea; and the Prince
of Achaia, who forgot the perils surrounding the
Latin empire of Constantinople, in his eagerness
“to combat the Moslem on the banks of the Nile;
thither, recovered from their fright, had come the
Crusaders whose vessels the storm had driven on the
Syrian coast; and thither, with the arriére ban of
France, Alphonse, Count of Poictiers—‘ one of that